Jewish Studies 

• The Sheridan Libraries own a few manuscript books dating from the 16th and 17th centuries, many of which were part of the Strouse gift.
  • They include cabalistic and other teachings, ethics, and prayers.
    
• A beautiful, partly illuminated, large 15th-century humanistic manuscript of De bello Judaica by Josephus, on parchment (in Italian).

A very interesting Haggadah from the 18th century, illustrated and including Ladino, Hebrew, and Yiddish text.

• The Leopold Strouse Rabbinical Library was one of the earliest gifts of Hebrew materials to the University, for which a printed catalogue is available in Special Collections.
  
  
• Other holdings also include:
  
  • Hebrew Scriptures, both alone and as part of Christian Bibles;
    
  • individual texts of the Hebrew Scriptures;
    
  • Biblical commentaries; ethics, law, ritual, prayers, and liturgical texts.
    
  • A small sub-collection of women's prayers, both in Hebrew and in Yiddish, and another concerning the practice of ritual slaughter
  • Grammars, lexicons, and chronologies.
    
    
• Also included in the collection are:
  •  a 17th-century Yiddish Bible intended for the Jewish refugees from Poland to Amsterdam. The text is sprinkled with Dutch idioms and phrases.
    
  • A small collection of children’s books, including the 1950s journal Far unzere Kinder, as well as editions of children’s songs and folklore comprise some of the post-War material.
    
  • We also hold a small run of Di Yidishe shprakh printed in Kiev from 1928-1930.
    

• The Project was founded and led by historian Salo Baron. and including among its members philosopher Hannah Arendt.
• It aimed to restore Jewish libraries and reclaim Jewish cultural artifacts following World War II.
• The group distributed some 158,000 "heirless" recovered books, after WWII.
• The Johns Hopkins University was the recipient of 45 titles placed in the 1950s by the New York-based Project. 
  • It is suspected that those titles never received the JCR bookplate and so they remain as an unidentified part of the Sheridan Libraries holdings.
  • A more recent gift did include one item bearing the JCR bookplate, and the search continues for the earlier deposit.